No more plastic bags!

In case you don't live near a Whole Foods store (I don't...the nearest one is 90 minutes away by car) or you haven't yet heard--Whole Foods will no longer offer plastic bags! Oh yes, it's true. Check out their website for yourself: http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/byobag/faq.html
I'm very excited about this. I saw a representative from Whole Foods speaking on the news yesterday and I felt as if I was hearing an angel sing!...cough, cough...sorry about that...I get a little "rainbows and unicorns" at times...I'll re-join reality now...Anyways, I did here a rep speaking on the news and was very excited. He said everything that I would have wanted him to say and sounded really intelligent. I thought--what a great spokesperson! He is an asset to the cause.

Also, this weekend I read that Bill Gates (or rather his foundation) will be donating a bazillion dollars...OK, really it is $306 million which is essentially a bazillion to me... to help promote local farm practices in poverty stricken countries. The link is here if you want to check it out for yourself: http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/01/25/davos.main/index.html
I hate being overly optimistic about news like this as I feel that all too often the money ends up getting mis-spent, doesn't get to the people it should, bad things screw it all up...but if it goes down as it is supposed to---it could be awesome. My hope is that poverty stricken people are enabled to successfully grow food to feed their families. I don't want them to grow corn for the biofuel industry... My hope is that they can thrive and help others. I guess we'll just have to wait and see how it all unfolds...

**My apologies if my adding links all the time annoys anyone, but I am a "I want proof!" type of person...I don't want to just read some bloggers re-telling of news...I want to check it out myself. Knowing how twisted the internet can get...I hope you'd want proof as well...it's my way of keeping everything just ducky.